Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up(theguardian.com) |
Boarding passes and check-ins could be scrapped in travel shake-up(theguardian.com) |
What I didn’t see in the article was anything about the motivation for this change. Why undertake such an expensive revision to boarding systems? Who is benefiting?
I prefer paper travel documents because I know there's no chance they'll break down from a dead battery/no signal/cracked screen.
(“Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter” [1].)
This is also quite scary.
> airlines will instead be alerted when passengers arrive at the airport and their face is scanned.
I think we can all agree that edge cases will always exist. The question is does this system make those cases better or worse. What's the backup in case the first-line system fails? You go talk to the airline agents and get a paper boarding pass printed?
The facial recognition system I'm much more wary of. Will it recognize you if you are coming back home with a black eye (happened to me one time)? Could your doppelganger cause confusion with the check-in system? Is this system significantly more convenient for the traveler that it's worth putting your biometric data into a database that could potentially be appropriated for other purposes?
> Could your doppelganger cause confusion with the check-in system?
That's the scary one.
If someone is travelling with someone with a severe disability, or children, do they need to include them on their smartphone? What about people who just don't want one? Or can't use one? People with a dumbphone?
Or will there be a way to travel with a boarding pass, the price for which is being submitted to extra checks and longer lines, because if it isn't made extra inconvenient more people would do that?
Presumably your face still works. And if both fail, you do what one does when you lose your boarding pass: talk to the gate agent.
Digital ID has no issues with me having or not having on glasses, growing and losing a beard or having had one eye patched. When it has, a person can make a subjective call. Like, people lose boarding passes all the time. The status quo is faulty and expensive.